


no regrets

by sauer (Showert_ime)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Café, Coffee Shops, Comedy, Crush at First Sight, First Impressions, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Nosebleed, date
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-06-01 00:53:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15131495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Showert_ime/pseuds/sauer
Summary: Baekhyun meets Kyungsoo in the line at Nekt Café--in a bit of an unexpected way.





	no regrets

Baekhyun is standing in line to get an iced americano when the guy in front of him gets a nosebleed.

At first, Baekhyun doesn’t even notice it. He is so so hot and desperate to inhale cold, pure liquid energy, he’s not even really aware of others around him; just solely fixated on his to-be caffeinated drink.

But then, he sees red dots on the floor, between the guy’s feet. Two at first, then two more—and only then Baekhyun finally understands what’s going on and walks up to the stranger, tapping him on the shoulder.

(Nice, soft muscled shoulder—)

When the guy whips his head around, he reminds Baekhyun of his grandma’s cat, of her stare when he startles her, with eyes oh so round and oh so wide open. “Yes?”

And there are two bloody trails running down the stranger’s philtrum, lips, chin. Lovely.

But, seriously, sans the blood, the guy seems cute. Overly shocked that he was accosted by someone, but cute nonetheless. There’s an air of innocent nonchalance about him—

So Baekhyun does what any respectable man would do, and tells him about his predicament. (Because it doesn’t appear that the stranger is aware of his life juice loss.)

“Hi, I’m Baekhyun.” Confusion. Awkwardness hangs in the air, a tad too heavy. “I mean—You’re bleeding?”

The man’s eyebrows are thick, and as he furrows them, Baekhyun can’t help but focus on the movement. It’s comical, exaggerated, and yet the man looks so, so deadpan, like he’s been thinking about the assignment deadline he forgot about for his stylistics class, and his expression didn’t quite follow live events. “What?”

Not that Baekhyun knows whether or not this guy goes to university, but it suits him, suits his square glasses, his denim jacket and how he tucked his striped shirt in his pants.

“You’re bleeding from your nose,” he repeats, and points at the other’s face. The black haired man brings a hand up, brushing the tip of his index against his mouth. And by the look in his features as he stares at it, it’s definitely covered in blood.

“Oh.”

Silence. The employee is regarding them weirdly from behind her cash register. The stranger doesn’t move, yet, and neither does Baekhyun.

It’s not that he needs prompting to move, to act, it’s just that … for a brief moment, he wonders if he should help at all.

There are two customers behind them, joined quickly enough by a third one. A fly buzzes around Baekhyun’s head, and that finally makes him move.

He crosses the distance to the counter and just grabs the whole tissue dispenser, because, well, the guy is bleeding a lot, and he’s sure they have other tissue dispensers, anyway.

When he turns back, the guy has plastered his hands to his nose, as if trying to hold the fluids in, but it’s vain. It’s gore, too, almost, but Baekhyun doesn’t mind. Not too much, anyway. “Here!” He says (screams, because at that specific moment, he loses control of his vocal chords) and holds out the dispenser for the other to take.

The man grabs a few fistfuls of tissues and just sticks everything to his nose, his mouth, his chin; his knuckles are smeared with red, and it all looks a bit ridiculous.

Baekhyun would laugh, except the man’s shirt is now stained, and there’s blood on the ground. People are going to think there was a fight or something, because people are overly dramatic and think in extremes instead of going with more boring, more probably happenings, like ’a stranger got a nosebleed in the middle of the line at the Nekt Café—”. And what if someone sees all that blood and faints? What if someone gets all nauseous and unwell because of such a sight? What if the nosebleed guy himself hates blood and was just contemplating life and now he’s going to associate Baekhyun’s face with this negative event in his day—

So he swings an arm around the stranger’s shoulders to pull him away from the line and into the bathroom.

The hum of the neon lights is louder in the enclosed space, but if cute-possibly-university student is going to get clean, it’s not happening anywhere else but here.

He is still pressing tissues to his nose, but the blood is still gushing out. “Pinch the bridge of your nose,” Baekhyun instructs, and when the stranger doesn’t react, just eyes him blankly, Baekhyun takes it upon himself to tilt his chin downward and apply pressure on the bridge. “Here.”

It’s awkward, weird to touch someone he absolutely doesn’t know in such a way. Baekhyun can only imagine the internal screams he is most definitely releasing; after all, he, himself, absolutely abhors being touched in the face, all the more so if he doesn’t know that the fingers on him have been washed recently.

"I can do it myself," comes a gruff voice, and Baekhyun takes his hand back with a jolt.

For good measure, he replies (whines), "You just had to do it when I told you to."

What he receives is a glare, a slightly petrifying one at that, but he lets it bounce off of him. The guy can sure glower, but Baekhyun is here to help. Even if he can be petty, at times.

The stranger’s nosebleed eventually relents, and then Baekhyun just brings him more paper to clean and dry himself with. No words are exchanged; acknowledgement grunts, sure, and some huffs, but no actual sentences ring in the air before the cute guy is as fresh as he can be with dark blotches on his shirt.

"Do you, uh—have something else to change into?"

A moment of hesitation, of pondering. "No," maybe-university-guy says, "I’ll have to head home. Or maybe buy a new shirt." He frowns. He fishes his cellphone out of his back pants pocket, taps the screen.

16:07.

“Fuck.”

Baekhyun’s eyes change into interrogation marks, and he raises a curious eyebrow at the other. “You want to fuck?” He asks, not without a teasing lilt to his voice. 

The stranger’s right eye ticks. If they were in an anime, a vein would definitely be pulsing on his forehead. “What? No—why would you—it’s late. It’s too late for me to go home, and I barely have enough time to get myself a coffee and a new shirt.” He promptly starts rummaging through his backpack, which Baekhyun hadn’t even realized was on his back all that time, and by the expression that his features paint after two minutes, it’s not good.

Not Good™.

He doesn’t say anything, but Baekhyun knows despair when he sees it. The guy’s face has gone pale, and he looks two seconds away from locking himself up in a dirty brewery bathroom stall to cry until his eyeballs fall out.

He even gives a (pitiful, yet manly) sniffle, and Baekhyun’s eyes focus in on how hard he’s gnawing on his lips.

“You … are you okay?” Baekhyun asks tentatively, humour hopefully a hundred percent gone from his tone. (People have gotten angry at him sooo often because they misinterpreted it.)

“No,” the other croaks. “Today is the worst day, I—” A hitch. “I don’t even have my wallet.” Silence. Then, a shaky breath. “I have seventy-two cents left. Seventy-two. I can’t buy anything with that—”

It’s almost funny, how thick-eyebrow guy’s eyes have filled with water, yet his face in itself is suddenly set in stone, expressionless. It’s as if the only way through which he is able to convey his inner turmoil is through his eyeballs, through his iris and pupils, and everything else has shut down.

But Baekhyun feels terrible for the guy.

“What do you … have tonight? That you can’t go home for?” It’s an innocent inquiry; one through which Baekhyun is trying to grasp the gravity of the situation.

“An interview,” the stranger answers.

Ah.

It wouldn’t do him a favour, most definitely, to show up to a job interview with a bloody shirt and red-rimmed eyes.

And God knows how some job interviews can be nerve-wracking when their impact on someone’s future is taken into account.

“Do you want to hang out with me, then?”

The guy blinks owlishly. “What?”

It’s a spur of the moment thing, really. It doesn’t have everything to do with the fact that the stranger is cute; if anything, it has more to do with the fact that he has nothing to do but go home and play Stardew Valley. And while he’s admittedly addicted to the game and really needs to get that marriage proposal to Sebastian going, he supposes he could spend a few hours for someone who really needs it right now.

If said someone accepts, anyway.

“I could shop for a new shirt with you.” The other is staring at him like he is crazy—he isn’t—he just has a tendency to … well. Whatever. He wants to help. “Then, you can go to that interview without looking like you got mauled on the way and thought a little blood on your striped shirt was presentable, and also without looking like you’re into weird, gore goth aesthetics. Or whatever it is.”

A pause. The guy’s eyebrows are now drawn into a thick, pronounced line, and he has averted his eyes to the ground. “What do you even get for doing this?” he mumbles. "What do you want from me?"

Baekhyun ponders. Message to Brain: don’t come up with something that will sound creepy.

“I get to hang out with someone new, who is quite handsome, and to help him… I guess?” Wow. That was smooth! Kind of. Not awkward at all, nope.

Well, okay. A bit. But just a tiny, tiny bit.

"That sounded so fake."

At that precise moment, Baekhyun’s heart is crushed. Not entirely, because it hurts and he can still feel things, but he almost wished it was destroyed on the spot.

But he won’t let himself be shot down—not yet.

"Well, as awkward as you just made everything, it’s what I think." Petty—that’s what he is being, but he can’t help it. "So. Are you going to take me up on the offer, or not?"

Baekhyun gives him a once over, from his short, black hair to his ruined shirt, and down to his sneakers, feet at an outward angle in a way that reminds Baekhyun of a penguin.

The stranger suddenly seems very self-conscious, scratches at the back of his head with a strangled huff. "You don’t even know my name."

"There’s an easy way to solve that," Baekhyun grins, and holds his hand out for the other to take. "So, let’s do this again. I’m Baekhyun, I’m 24 years old, and I’m a translation student. I think you’re cute, but also, you just surprised me with your nosebleed. You had a shitty day, that’s pretty clear, and I wanted to help. You are?"

There’s obvious hesitation in the lines of the other’s body language, but eventually, his lips part, and out come words painted with a smooth, warm voice Baekhyun already can’t get enough of—especially now that it’s not annoyed at him. "I’m Kyungsoo. 23 years old … and you just helped me with my nosebleed. I’m … also a translation student."

Baekhyun’s smile gets even bigger.

"And I’d like to hang out with you. If you buy me a shirt, that is. And coffee.”

Right. Baekhyun internally winces at the idea of spending money on someone that isn’t him—but it’s okay, and it will be okay, because he gets to spend time with Kyungsoo. And although they are (almost) perfect strangers, he has a good feeling about him.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! kudos are appreciated, and so are comments!   
> i might add another part to this AU but for now, consider this completed!


End file.
